Mainers could get some immediate relief under congressional Republicans’ tax bills, but down the road lower- and middle-income households may shoulder the burden to pay for the tax cuts, which the Congressional Budget Office said will increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.
House Republicans said their bill would pay for itself, and U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin said Tuesday that he will vote for it.
But U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said she won’t. She and policy analyst Sarah Austin of the left-leaning Maine Center for Economic Policy said in a roundtable discussion in Portland on Monday that the bill will be paid for by forthcoming cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits used by many elderly and low-income residents and the Pell student-loan program for low- to middle-class Mainers.
“The premise to this [House bill] is trickle-down economics, where the corporations will hire more and the rich people will spend more,” Pingree said in an interview with the BDN.
Pingree and Austin said the tax plan’s real intent is the corporate tax cut, which would decrease to 20 percent from the current 35 percent.
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “After initial relief, paying for GOP tax cuts could hit Mainers hard,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Lori Valigra, please follow this link to the BDN online.
